Last September 11 marked the 40th Anniversary of the Fire Island National Seashore (FINS) and no one wanted the event to go uncelebrated. (It was also one of the last celebrated in the Ocean Beach Community House, now handsomely refurbished and ready for another 75 years as Fire Islanders’ central meeting place.)
John Lund, president of the Davis Park Association, told me the highlights of the meeting were remarks by some of those present at the creatio of FINS. Lee E. Koppelman, who presides over the Long Island Regional Planning Board from his Stony Brook University office, was one speaker of note. Others included Attorney Irving Like and Maurice Barbash, both of Dunewood, which Barbash developed back in the 1950s.
Murray and Irving were leading figures in the creation of Fire Island National Seashore, in part because both wanted to thwart the wishes of Robert Moses to build a road down the center of the island. Dr. Koppelman was a critic of Moses because of the Master Builder’s refusal to allow mass transit of any kind on his parkways, or even the LIE. Moses didn’t think much of the idea of a National Seashore on Fire Island, either. He felt the 2,000-odd, mostly modest beach cottages that existed at the time should simply be condemned and purchased at fair market value and the whole island become a state or county park out of the island
That would have meant the union of Jones Beach and Robert Moses State Parks with parks on Fire Island, including Smith Point and Cupsogue County parks, and all the way to Westhampton Beach, It also would have a highway connecting the Robert Moses Causeway and Smith Point Bridge.
The Fire Island Association (FIA) was represented at the September 11 event by Suzy Goldhirsch, president of the Seaview Association, and John Lund. Suzy’s family has been coming to Fire Island for more than a century, so she holds a different view of Fire Island than Moses had.
The meeting was videotaped by the park, and we’re looking forward to being able to participate vicariously. Some of the refreshments were provided by the Ocean Beach Association and Rachel’s donated what was reported to be a wonderful cake.
I couldn’t be there because of a commitment to attend the fall conference of the American Shore & Beach Preservation Association in New Orleans. ASBPA conferences are attended by coastal scientists and engineers, state and federal agency types and a host of beach communities like ours, all concerned about shore protection. Among other things, you learn about what works and what doesn’t on other beaches. The 80 year old organization is increasingly what speaks for the nation’s beaches. With shore protection – and national parks, for that matter – high on the list of things the administration doesn’t want to spend any money on, ASBPA is vital to people who care about beaches.
As everyone who has seen at the beach recently is probably aware, the storms that affected the Gulf and east coasts did not allow Fire Island to escape unscathed. While the late October storms may have been 1,000 miles out in the Atlantic, the winds and astronomic tides damaged virtually every beach. Dunes were undercut in several communities and stairs to the beach are only now being replaced in some othersThis makes beach nourishment, always important, a critical issue this year. Under terms of the agreement (known as an Environmental Assessment, or EA) hammered out in the summer of 2002, any scraping projects must be completed by the end of this year. The theory was that this would coincide with the conclusion of the seemingly interminable studies being carried out by the Corps of Engineers in its reformulation of the Fire Island Inlet to Montauk Point project (FIMP). Any community-sponsored beach nourishment or scraping project for Fire Island that grew out of the FIMP reformulation would have been supplanted by a presumably more comprehensive federal-state-local effort.
Unfortunately, not only will the FIMP reformulation not be concluded in 2005, but it also appears as if mid-2007 will be the earliest date for a document the public can comment upon. Bob Spencer and I took this matter up with the District Engineer, Col. Richard Polo, but FIMP reformulation remains mired in Corps procedures that no one seems to know how to accelerate.
Another problem with the 2002 EA was that the Seashore had hired a consultant to reach an agreement in what was expected to be a contentious session. There was little contention, as it happened, and the consultant, while good at writing things on flip charts, didn’t know much about coastal processes. One consequence of this was that two separate types of projects – beach fill and beach scraping – were covered in the same EA. This wasn’t a good idea because beach fill, it can be argued, has a greater environmental impact on the beach than beach scraping does, even if neither has very much of an impact.
But to save time (consultants are expensive and work by the hour), the post-project monitoring requirements were handled as if the projects were identical. Those requirements, called “reasonable and prudent measures,” or RPMs, cover such things as symbolic (string) fencing and having people look for signs of the presence of endangered plant or animal species. Lumping the two kinds of projects together was a mistake because the cost of follow-up on a million-dollar fill project can get lost in the overall budget. But if the same things are required for a $15,000-$20,000 scraping job, things get out of whack. One community estimated it would cost three times the cost of a project to monitor the results.
All this was the subject of a cordial meeting on March 24 at FINS’ Patchogue office, hosted by the new Superintendent, Michael T. Reynolds. Mayor Rogers, Bob Spencer, Suzy Goldhirsch, John Lund and I were joined by Chuck Bowman, whose company, Land Use Ecological Services, supervises most Fire Island fill and scraping projects. Whether changes will be possible remains to be seen. It may be that a new EA will have to be forged, or that the Superintendent may have some flexibility in implementing the terms of the present one.
Encouragingly, at a meeting of the FIA board in New York on May 11, Supt. Reynolds expressed the hope that the extent of monitoring required can be reexamined. He also is hopeful that the expense and work required for a new EA may be avoidable, but the jury was (and when you read this possibly still is) out on that.
The May 11 meeting was the first chance for many FIA board members to meet Supt. Reynolds, although his appointment book showed he would be visiting many associations this spring and summer. It seems safe to say that all were favorably impressed. Glancing only occasionally at his PDA, he rattled off a dozen or more key topics he wanted to discuss.
He was delayed, understandably, by the piping plover death that day at Sailors Haven. But the discussion lasted for over an hour and when he concluded the board actually applauded. Not a single brick followed him out the door; in all, the meeting was a harbinger that the principle of better communication and cooperation begun by Dave Spirtes will continue.

Gerard Stoddard is President of the Fire Island Association; the views expressed are his.